


A man turns around.

by spqr



Series: Author’s favorites. [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Excessive Europe, Friends With Benefits, Multi, Post-Endgame, Suicidal Thoughts, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 15:33:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18285164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr/pseuds/spqr
Summary: Liver failure or a lone assassin with a long-range weapon will get him eventually. He doesn’t think it will take too long, now that he’s retired. He wishes death would hurry up. If happiness were coming his way, it would’ve gotten here by now.All that’s left to do is wait. Languish in the "later life" section of his Wikipedia page. Wake up in the morning and go to bed at night. Exist, until it’s over.





	A man turns around.

It ends in a departures terminal.

 

Tony guesses it’s fitting. It would be sort of weird if it ended in the arrivals hall at the other end of the airport. Weird if they had to turn around and get _in_ Tony’s car, drive _back_ into the city after they poured ice water over his heart. Better that they turn around and get on a plane to Stockholm. Leave him standing alone.

 

He’s probably being melodramatic thinking like this, but his nerves have been pretty raw since they reversed the snap, since they handed the reins over to the new kids, since the present started sliding into the past and _end-the-fight_ started to look less like him, Pepper, and two-point-five kids and more like him, alcoholism, and an empty skyscraper.

 

And he’s been sleeping with them on and off for going on five months, he still feels like a third wheel but he’s gotten used to having them around and they’re beginning to feel like family. And neither of them hug him when they say goodbye.

 

Neither of them even touch him. Steve’s already halfway to the security line, incognito in the crowd with his beard and his baseball cap. Bucky hefts his duffle bag higher on his shoulder, prosthetic hidden in a sleeve, and says, “Thanks for the ride.”

 

It’s abrupt. Tony’s momentarily thrown for a loop. “No problem,” he says when he recovers. “Have fun on your walkabout.”

 

Bucky smiles that warm smile that tricks Tony into thinking they have a deeper relationship than they actually do. “See you later, Tony.”

 

Then he’s gone. Tony has no idea how much later _later_ might be. He stands there in the check-in hall in his don’t-look-at-me sunglasses and his ratty jeans and watches Bucky until he’s rounded the corner after Steve, who didn’t even say goodbye. Who just waved from a few meters away like an afterthought. Tony stands there for a long time, staring at his mesh sneakers and trying not to feel too sorry for himself. Self-pity’s a bad look.

 

But the only two people who exist in his life with anything like consistency just left for who-knows-how-long without so much as a friendly clap on the shoulder, and he’s reluctant to head home and put himself at the mercy of those raw, tender nerves of his.

 

ººº

 

Sometimes Tony thinks he’s run out of time to be happy.

 

He had so many chances to get it right, and he fucked up each one. Now he has to content himself with tiny scraps of other people’s happiness, pieces they’re willing to share, a laugh here and a roll in the hay there, an inside joke to remind him he used to be part of something, a genuine smile from a barista who happens to be a fan or a late night call from Rhodey.

 

Now he’s pushing fifty and the way he’s lived his life, he figures _too little too late_ is a bit of an understatement.

 

He can’t say he’d do anything different, though, if he could do it again. Pepper left because of his obsession with reversing the snap and he can’t imagine a world in which he would let Peter Parker stay dead. The Avengers disbanded because it was time for the next generation to step up and he can’t imagine a world in which he could rationalize putting on the Iron Man suit when his hands shake constantly and the sight of ash stops him cold.

 

So sure, the future looks darker and lonelier every day, but at least it’s not going to last long. Not that he’s suicidal or anything—when Howard was getting up there in years, he used to say _I’m not dying until I’m done,_ and it sort of stuck with Tony in a bad way.

 

But liver failure or a lone assassin with a long-range weapon will get him eventually. He doesn’t think it will take too long, now that he’s retired. He wishes death would hurry up. If happiness were coming his way, it would’ve gotten here by now. It’s not coming.

 

All that’s left to do is wait. Languish in the _later life_ section of his Wikipedia page. Wake up in the morning and go to bed at night. Exist, until it’s over.

 

ººº

 

Between the snap and the reversal, Tony and Steve get back to where they used to be. And then they keep going, and they grow closer than they ever were before.

 

The rest of the team knit tight together too, but when it comes down to it the rest of the team doesn’t share the burden of leadership, of making decisions that are going to affect half of all life in the universe. Heavy choices have always been Steve and Tony’s prerogative. Apparently time and distance and broken hearts have changed a lot less than Tony thought.

 

There are a lot of late nights that turn into early mornings, sleeplessness pulling them together like two orbital bodies that can feel each other in the deep dark of the void.

 

Steve tells Tony about Bucky. Everything one person could wish to know about another one. More than Tony thought anyone knew about anybody, whole encyclopaedias of food preferences and sleeping positions and hopes and fears. It would seem like a violation of privacy, maybe, if Tony were the sort of person who would ever repeat the information, but he’s not. He thinks Steve is trying to recreate his partner, talk him back into existence somehow, like if all these memories are there, if Steve _knows_ he was real, he can’t be gone.

 

Almost like a reconciliation, Tony tells Steve about his parents.

 

Steve knew Howard, but he didn’t know him _after_. After the war, after Vietnam, after _Steve_. After alcohol and marriage and fatherhood.

 

Sitting on the porch of the compound with their elbows on their knees, watching the first grey light of sunrise bleed over the far-off horizon, Tony tells Steve about the time Howard threw a bottle at him and actually hit his mark, points out the thin white scars around his ear and his jaw. About the time Howard was halfway through a bottle of Maker’s Mark and handed Tony, two years old, a soldering iron wrong-end first.

 

“Oh,” Steve says, thumb tracing the faint red line on Tony’s palm. “That’s why you—“

 

“Don’t like to be handed things? Bingo.”

 

Steve’s big hand could crush Tony’s like a baby bird. Easy as anything. Little un-armored human bones. Instead he’s gentle. The air is cool and the heat of him so close is…

 

He keeps Tony’s hand while Tony tells him about Maria.

 

Her easy elegance, her big philanthropic heart that didn’t always have room to spare for an inconvenient son who threw tantrums and rebelled and crashed cars into lakes.

 

Her soft Italian lullabies and how she used to dance through the kitchen to old records with a tomato-sauce wood-spoon for a partner. How she used to let him stand on her stocking-toes and waltz him around, before he got too big. How they had picnics with Howard on the floor of his workshop when he couldn’t stop work to come up for dinner, before everything started to fall apart. How one time he got arrested at one of her galas and she left him in a holding cell all night because she was so furious with him.

 

How she never, ever raised a hand to him. How she’d never planned for a son, but in the end, Tony thinks she loved him anyways. If he _knows_ it’s real, it can’t be a lie.

 

Steve’s eyes are red by the time he’s done.

 

The air is cool and the heat of him so close is comforting in a way Tony hasn’t felt in a long, long time. Like hiding in his mother’s skirts. Curling up against Howard’s chest.

 

ººº

 

They call him from Lisbon. Their plane’s been cancelled and to stay on schedule they need to be in Casablanca in twelve hours. Tony lies and says he was on his way to Marrakesh anyways on Stark Industries business, then flies his private jet to go meet them in Portugal.

 

Lisbon is all tight, meandering streets and terra cotta rooftops that glow orange in the low afternoon sun. Tony finds them in an inn on the waterfront, a three-storey building painted the exact color of the sky. They have a balcony that looks out over the azure bay.

 

Tony leans on the railing. The black iron is sun-hot under his elbows. He tries to imagine pissing away the last few years of his life here, and can’t.

 

“Damn, doll,” Bucky says, from the open balcony door. “That ass really don’t quit.”

 

Tony straightens and turns to face him.

 

Bucky’s leaning against the door jamb with a satisfied smirk, eyes heavy on Tony’s body. He’s cut his hair. It looks good on him. Looks fresh. Like he’s still that kid who enlisted because it was the right thing to do. That kid who never killed a man, never seen war, never died.

 

Tony tries to smirk back, but it comes out more as a gentle smile. “This ass has been missing your hands,” he says, to make up for it. “What do you say?”

 

Bucky’s eyes darken. “I don’t think I gotta say anything. I’ll just…”

 

He moves across the balcony in two strides, grabs handfuls of Tony’s ass and yanks him in.

 

Bucky’s always been much better at touching than talking, at least as long as Tony’s known him. Tony doesn’t mind; he presses his body to Bucky’s and kisses him hard and unforgiving, like an argument, like he always kisses him. Their bare feet bump together. Bucky’s warmer than the light of the sun. This isn’t Tony’s happiness, but he’s glad to borrow it.

 

They stumble inside and fall onto Bucky and Steve’s unmade bed.

 

Breeze breathes through the open door, and Bucky breathes hot and close against Tony’s skin, his chest and his ribcage and his neck. Tony’s lungs expand and contract with an abandon that he hasn’t felt in ages, like they’re starving for air, addicted to it.

 

They ride that wave of lust up and over. As they’re washing back up on the shore of lucidity, Tony notices Steve straddling the chair in the corner, leaning on the back of it. His lips are open and between the poles of the back rest Tony can see he’s hard as a rock in his shorts.

 

Bucky notices, too. “C’mere, Stevie,” he murmurs.

 

Steve unfolds his bulk and joins them on the bed. The whole mattress rocks to accommodate him. His mouth lands on Tony’s flushed-pink skin just long enough to leave a scrape of beard burn before he falls into Bucky, wraps up in his partner.

 

Tony rolls out of bed, pulls his pants on, and retreats to the balcony.

 

He’s not far enough away to escape the sounds they make. Soft gasps and deep, rugged grunts. Steve’s inhalation catching and turning to an animal moan turning to _Bucky, Bucky, Bucky._ Bucky’s voice low and, “Love you, Steve—fuck, baby, I love you.” Steve’s shout, the same surprised sound he makes every time he comes.

 

Those sounds aren’t for him, but if Tony steals them and pins them to the inside of his sternum for later, no one ever has to know.

 

A cool breeze comes over the terra cotta rooftops. Tony shivers, and feels the sharp tug of lube and cum drying in his shorthairs. Steve and Bucky are murmuring to each other inside, laughing softly in the warm aftermath of their lovemaking.

 

ººº

 

After the reversal, they collect all their people at the compound.

 

There are more of them than Tony ever could have imagined at the beginning of this. The compound is full to bursting, and it’s such a relief that every time Tony smiles he feels like he’s about to cry. It’s a big, cathartic feeling. His body can’t contain it all.

 

Tony and Steve suddenly have company on their sleepless nights. A lot of it. Tony can’t say he minds. From time to time he misses the solitude, the feeling of him and Steve alone and apart from the entire world, but then he gets a sucker punch of guilt for letting that sadness wash over him when he’s got no reason not to be happy.

 

So when the sadness comes, he removes himself to the edges of it all, the roof or his workshop or dark, empty country roads. Leaves everyone else in to their celebration.

 

Bucky’s not that good with so many people around, but he doesn’t seem to mind Tony. They sort of stumble into keeping each other company. One night Bucky finds Tony halfway to the garage, and then they’re in the Corvette together, and then they’re laying on the hood in the middle of a field and the sun’s winking between the treetops.

 

They haven’t spoken much, but as the yellow sunlight creeps toward them over the field, Bucky glances at Tony and says, “I’m sorry. About your parents.”

 

Tony swallows. “Nothing to be sorry for,” he croaks. “Wasn’t you.”

 

“I just wanted to say it.”

 

Tony understands the urge, but. “You don’t need to look for forgiveness, Barnes. I’m not holding any of that against you, okay? You’re already forgiven.”

 

Bucky looks pained, but as they sit there in the quiet, the tension in his face starts to ease away. Birds sing in the trees and wind rustles the tall grass around them and the sun alights on the hood of the Corvette and kisses their feet, and Tony thinks maybe he’s watching Bucky forgive himself in realtime. Catharsis, finally catching up with him.

 

Theirs is an easy friendship. It shouldn’t be, after everything, but it is.

 

Tony already has these deep wells of Bucky-information in his head, from his nights with Steve. His favorite ice cream, the exact origin of the scar on his right heel, how he lost his virginity. He understands the specific strain of guilt that Bucky’s walking around with. Unintended consequences that can _only_ trace back to you, that you never meant to cause but you can’t escape. There’s never any of the rush-to-judgement misunderstanding that he had with Steve, none of the shaky forged-in-fire bonds that broke as soon as the dust settled.

 

When he actually manages to sleep, Tony dreams of Bucky killing him. They’re not violent dreams. Bucky’s hands are always a mercy. It always feels like _oh, god, finally_.

 

ººº

 

On the tarmac in Casablanca, Steve says, “You should tag along for a while, Tony.”

 

It’s an afterthought. Tony’s halfway back up the steps to the jet after another hug-less goodbye, but he stops with a hand on the railing and turns around. They’re standing at the bottom of the stairs in shorts and shades, still young enough that they look like they could just be taking a gap year after college. Backpacking-in-love.

 

“Yeah, doll,” Bucky agrees, smiling. “Come on, I bet you know all the best spots. Show us around for a couple cities, will ya?”

 

Tony, who doesn’t actually have business in Marrakesh, pretends to think about it. “I guess I could shuffle some things around. All right, why the hell not?”

 

They wind their way through Casablanca, Cairo, Ankara, Istanbul. Tony spends a few nights in their bed and most nights in hotel bars, wandering the streets by himself, trying not to think too hard about them back in their warm cocoon of closeness murmuring _I love you_ over and over again. He can steal ferry rides and wine-drunk lunches and laughter over Steve’s botched pronunciation of _merhaba_ , but he can’t steal that.

 

 _Tag along, show us around_ , and as if he needed another reminder that he’s not really a part of this, they ask him to take pictures of them everywhere they go.

 

Smiling, arms around each other’s shoulders. Snapshots that will go in a photo album someday. A photo album that will go on a whole shelf of them. Physical representations of their memories, building up a life together. These will be permanent, and Tony’s not permanent.

 

No one wants pictures of Tony. Not even the tabloids, not these days.

 

He’s getting old. He stares at himself in the mirrors behind bars and in hotel bathrooms and in the reflection of the water and sees Howard more than he sees himself. He’s going gray at the temples. There are lines around his eyes that weren’t there before. His knees crack when he stands if he’s been sitting for too long. He thinks maybe the sudden onset of age is because he’s having trouble finding things to live for. No team, no fight, no family.

 

The world doesn’t want to remember him like this. He doesn’t blame them. No one even recognizes him in the streets anymore, which bothers him more than it should.

 

They fuck a lot.

 

Steve opens him up with soapy fingers and presses him into the wall of the shower. Bucky follows him into the tiny bathroom in a streetside café and sucks him off, keeps sucking until Tony shouts loudly enough that Steve probably hears them back at their table.

 

Tony gets an awful sunburn in a beachside town in Greece, Bucky kisses the sand off his skin and Steve draws constellations between new freckles with his tongue. The soft motion of the sheets and the rasp of Steve’s beard and the thick stagnant air all burns, his heartbeat throbs in his skin, everything is hallucinogenically hot except for the orgasmic-cold of Bucky’s metal hand. In the morning it all blurs into the sight of the green-painted ceiling, flashes of their bodies and their voices and the feather-light touch of their eyelashes against his face.

 

He wakes up in their bed for the first time in a while. It’s a rare occurrence. Usually he remembers to leave before morning, but the sunburn and the heat stroke probably fucked with his head. His mind takes a while to come on-line, like an old dial-up computer.

 

Bodies always seem softer in the morning, Tony thinks. Like that marble sculpture where you can see the indentation the man’s fingers press in the woman’s thighs. Supple. He lays for a while, unwilling to move and upset his sunburn, and watches Steve’s chest rise and fall, watches Bucky’s slack mouth move ever-so-slightly in sleep where he’s pillowed on Steve’s stomach.

 

 _I love you,_ he mouths, just to feel the strange shape of it.

 

One of Steve’s arms is curled around Bucky as far as it can go. His other is stretched out toward Tony, not quite far enough to reach. An afterthought.

 

ººº

 

 _I’m not dying until I’m done_ , Tony tells himself after the snap.

 

 _Not dying until I’m done,_ in Afghanistan and Siberia and on Titan and every other time he ever thinks of quitting. Every time he wants to lay down in the sand, in the snow, in the rubble and just let go of those last few tethers chaining him to this life. _Not dying until I’m done_ , when Pepper leaves and a long drop from a high place starts to feel very, very tempting. When “I don’t have suicidal thoughts” morphs glacially into “Well, I won’t _act_ on them.”

 

 _Not dying until I’m done_ , but the more the New Avengers find their feet, the more Pepper improves Stark Industries, the more Wakandan outreach brings clean energy and tech education and international peace initiatives, the less he feels like there’s anything left for him to do. Most days it feels like there’s not a single person left in the world who needs him.

 

He thought for a while that Steve and Bucky were going to be his new purpose. Staying with them, making them laugh, making them safe and happy and giving them anything and everything they could ever want. For five months they lived in the tower with him, spent their mornings with him, their nights. Cooked breakfast and went for jogs and coaxed him out of the workshop when he lost track of time searching for obscure problems to fix.

 

They tricked him into thinking he might be able to eke out a little portion of happiness for himself. And then they left him in a departures terminal. Untouched.

 

 _Not dying until I’m done,_ he reminds himself on the drive home. _Smart people are happier alone._ That’s what Pepper told him, when she left—that the smartest people were happier being alone. She’d read a study. Beethoven, Newton, da Vinci, Tony Stark.

 

It’s bullshit, of course. Tony hates being alone.

 

Antithetical to the way he’s lived his life, he knows. Antithetical to the way he retreated from the compound after the reversal. Antithetical to the way that burner phone sat untouched in his pocket for two whole years. Antithetical to leaving bed before the sun rises every morning, leaving them soft and sleep-warm just to avoid the awkwardness of averted eyes and faked smiles when they woke up and realized he was still there. But no one ever follows him.

 

 _I’m not dying until I’m done_ , except what is there left for him to do?

 

ººº

 

There’s this way Steve and Bucky look at each other. This way they hold themselves. Like they’re a single being, a cohesive _us_. Like there’s nothing either of them could ever do to make the other one leave. Like there’s no question about it. About them.

 

Tony’s never inspired that sort of devotion in anyone. He can’t.

 

He goes to the bathroom in Rome and when he comes out they’re gone. He shoots off a quick text to ask them where they went, remind them he’s not with them. Across the piazza, a man gets down on one knee and takes his girlfriend’s hand. She smiles and cries. A small crowd accumulates around them, phones out, all saying _aw._ Clapping.

 

Maybe it’s natural, this urge Tony has to sun himself in the brilliance of other people’s happy endings. Maybe it just means he’s human.

 

 _Hopped on a tour bus,_ Steve texts back. _See you back at the hotel._

 

Tony doesn’t go back to the hotel that night. Instead, he wanders the streets he remembers from his childhood. Maria brought him here, when he was little, before he became too much of a terror for her to deal with. He remembers holding her hand, her catching him when he tripped on the uneven cobblestone streets, babbling nonsense Italian-English in his toddler voice. Remembers sitting on her lap to eat lunch at a little _cucina_ in a back alley. He finds it and wanders in for dinner. The owner recognizes him, remembers his mother.

 

 _Ah, Maria,_ he says to Tony. _Che bella, che bella. Tristissimo, vero. Vero._

The whole evening feels like something out of the past. The whole city. Tony has a meal that tastes like childhood next to the ghost of his mother and feels like his whole life is in the past. But it’s impossible to think about the future, here.

 

After dinner he finds a fountain in a deserted piazza and sits on the edge. Stares down into the artificial lights at the bottom of the clear blue water, the shine of pennies and euros and coins he can’t identify. He feels closer to his mother here than he ever felt at her grave, just like he feels closer to Howard in his workshop than anywhere else.

 

He wonders, for a moment, how his life would have been different if they’d lived. If Howard had kept control of the company until Tony was good and ready to take over, if Maria had retired to a vineyard in California to spend her days in an apron with her hands covered in flower, hair twisted up into a wide-brimmed straw hat. If he could still call her. Say _Mom, I’m in trouble. Mom, I’m in love with two of the craziest boys on earth. Mom, I need you._

 

He probably wouldn’t call Howard.

 

He wonders what will happen to him if he lives longer than they ever did. Gets older than they ever did. Makes it to sixty, and then seventy, eighty. Wonders if there will be anyone around to take care of him, or if he’ll have to pay someone to do it. Thinks maybe it would be less painful to just die, then to know the only people left in your life are there for money.

 

The water’s cool on his fingers. Self-pity is a bad look. He gets his own hotel room.

 

ººº

 

It doesn’t really end in a departures terminal.

 

It ends in a restaurant in Geneva, just before sunset, when Tony’s nerves are still raw and tender from waking up in their bed alone with no note to tell him where they’d gone, from taking their photo in front of St. Pierre, from the French family who asked him to take _their_ photo after, like he was just some lone tourist, not someone who would ever be in a photo himself.

 

Melodramatic, he knows. He’s trying to scale back the over-analyzing, but he can’t really help it. It’s all these endings, catching up to him at once. Might also be the wine.

 

“You seem sad,” Steve says.

 

Tony straightens from his slouch, takes his elbows off the table. “Sorry.”

 

Steve frowns. “Tony—“

 

“Maybe I should head back to the States tomorrow,” Tony cuts across him. “Don’t wanna bring down your walkabout. You guys should’ve said something sooner.”

 

“Tony,” says Bucky. “No one wants you to leave.”

 

Steve’s frown has deepened. “You don’t have to apologize for being sad.”

 

Tony looks at them sideways. Cleaned up after a day of sightseeing, hair still wet, beards trimmed, shirts and jeans pressed, they look…well, mouthwatering. The soft yellow light in this restaurant isn’t helping, nor is the fact that they’re actually sitting in a triangle, around a circular table, instead of the two of them on one side and him on the other.

 

“Okay,” he says slowly. “I’m not really sure what’s going on here, guys.”

 

Steve leans toward him. “I’m asking if you’re okay,” he says, low enough that none of the other patrons could possibly hear him. “You’re making me worried, that’s all.”

 

There’s a pause, and then Tony laughs. “I’m fine.”

 

“You’re not fine,” Bucky says, a bit brusquely. “Come on, doll, don’t bullshit us. You know you can talk to me and Stevie about anything, right? No matter what it is.”

 

Steve’s starting to get that look like he’s going to start an argument if Tony doesn’t start cooperating with his mental health agenda. Tony downs the rest of his cabernet in one gulp, wipes his mouth with his napkin, and insists, “I’m fine, Buck, really.”

 

Steve scoffs, shakes his head. “Bullshit, Tony. You think we can’t tell somethings eating you?”

 

“Yeah, I’m fucking surprised you noticed, actually.”

 

Other people in the restaurant are starting to shoot them furtive looks. One or two of them might be looking long enough to figure out that there are three ex-Avengers sitting in this little French bistro on the lakefront. Bucky notices. Cautions, “Guys…”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Steve demands, ignoring him. “Are you—“

 

“Of course I’m sad, Steve,” Tony snaps. Steve’s mouth closes with a _clink_ of teeth. “My life is over. The Avengers are disbanded, my own damn company doesn’t need me, I can’t fly, I can’t fight, I live alone in the biggest fucking penthouse in New York and my most significant relationship is a three-way friends-with-benefits thing with two guys who are madly in love with each other. I don’t know what you want me to be happy about.”

 

People really are staring, now. Tony stands and throws his napkin down on the table. Steve looks stricken, but doesn’t say anything. Must know Tony’s right.

 

“Come on, doll,” Bucky tries, standing. “Don’t go. Sit down and talk to us.”

 

“No,” Tony says. “See you later.” And leaves them there.

 

ººº

 

He’s been storing things up for a long time. Good memories, for rainy days. He figures most of his days will be rainy, near the end, so he’s got to build up a pretty good cache.

 

His favorite mental album is the one of all his friends’ smiles. He uses it when he’s deep in the bottom of a bottle, too close to the edge of a roof, staring at sharp objects and fighting off intrusive thoughts like _what if I jammed that pencil in my eye_. Sometimes the only thing that shakes him out of a really black funk is imagining those smiles all turning to tears, to disapproving frowns, to disgust. The corners of those snapshots are well-thumbed.

 

When he lies alone in bed in the penthouse, his big room cold and dark and empty, he pulls down the album of Steve and Bucky and sex.

 

It’s an odd selection, all jumbled together, because Tony’s a sad old man who can’t just get by on bare skin and hard cocks and dirty words anymore. He needs to feel something. Needs to imagine the bedhead-poof of Bucky’s hair in the early morning, the adorable way he laughed when Tony told him he looked like a bird’s nest. The warmth of Steve close by on a cool morning, holding Tony’s hand more carefully than anyone had ever, ever touched him, the way he rubbed his red eyes and said, _I wish I was there. I wish I was there for you, Tony._

 

And it feels like someone’s grabbing his heart and twisting, but he revisits their first time together, the three of them. He stumbled into their room in the middle of the day, stumbled onto them twisted and sweaty in the bedsheets. He’d lingered in the door for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, “Not that I’m not enjoying the show, but maybe lock the door next time. Hang a sock on the door. _Something_. I mean, warn a guy.”

 

They stopped, but didn’t move apart. Bucky flopped down on the mattress beneath Steve, breathing hard, face flushed with happiness. “Maybe we wanted you to walk in.”

 

Tony froze carefully. “What?”

 

Steve sat back on his haunches, ass just barely covered by the clinging bedsheets, and looked at Tony over his shoulder. Tony could just barely see the head of his dick, and it stopped his breath dead in his throat, like sludge. “You heard him,” Steve said. “C’mere, Tones.”

 

Tony, of course, fell into them. Nothing else to be done. They pressed him between them and wrapped around him and there was _so much_ warm skin, and he wasn’t expecting declarations of love or anything, but it felt important. More important to Tony than it was to them, but. Steve kissed him like it might be the last chance he ever got, and Bucky gripped his hips so hard they bruised, then fitted his hands over the marks the next morning and smiled. And they stayed in bed for hours afterward, lazing well into the night, just talking.

 

Even once the others fell asleep, Tony stayed awake for a long time. Storing up memories. The security of Bucky’s arms around him, the faint smell of sweat in close to his chest, the sound of his even breathing. Steve molded to his back, head tucked into the nape of Tony’s neck.

 

He was gone by morning. But he stayed to steal those few minutes, because he was selfish, and he loved them so much his chest felt like it might split open with it.

 

ººº

 

Tony gets as drunk as it’s possible to get in Geneva.

 

He feels like a small, wounded thing as he finds his way back to their hotel. It’s raining, dumping buckets. He’s soaked by the time he’s three feet from the pub door, and by the time he’s made it into the safety of the lobby he’s shivering, frozen through.

 

They’re probably asleep by now, warm in bed together, but Tony knocks on the door anyways. He has a key in his pocket still, but he doesn’t want to let himself in. He wants them to get up and come to him, because he’s cold and he’s hurting and he knows he fucked up and he wants their attention, for some reason. He always wants their attention.

 

Steve answers the door. He’s still in the clothes he was in at the restaurant. Not asleep, then. He pulls Tony inside without a word, and then Bucky’s there with a towel, and Tony’s mind is streaky and he can’t latch onto things but they seem upset. He upset them.

 

They peel him out of his wet clothes, _splat_ everything down on the tile floor of the bathroom, hustle him into a warm shower.

 

Neither of them come in with him, and out of the blue Tony remembers something he read somewhere, once. People who are lonely take long, hot showers to substitute the warmth of the human body. He turns his face away from the spray and takes deep, wet gulps to try and stave off whatever’s welling up in him, but he can’t help it. He can’t help it.

 

They’re both still just standing right out there, so close but not close enough to touch. His eyes sting. “I’m sorry,” he says, tongue thick with tears. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that. I…I’m happy. I’m happy with whatever you guys will give me. I—I don’t need anything more than sex. I don’t. I’m sorry for wanting it, I’m sorry—“

 

“ _Shhh,_ Tones, shhh.” Bucky’s in the shower with him, still half-clothed, water darkening his shirt and his boxers. He pulls Tony to him, runs his hands over Tony’s cold, naked skin. “You ain’t got nothin’ to be sorry for, sweetheart.”

 

Tony leans into him and sucks in a big, sticky gasp. Bucky runs his flesh hand over Tony’s wet hair and kisses his temple. “God, this is pathetic,” Tony laughs. “I’m so pathetic.”

 

“No, baby, don’t say that.” Bucky squeezes him tighter. “Don’t ever say that.”

 

Steve pulls back the shower curtain. Tony’s not aware enough to notice the tear tracks on his face, but they’re there. “Bring him out, Buck,” he says. “Come on.”

 

They get Tony out of the shower and into a thick, warm robe, then bundle him in every blanket the hotel room has to offer and settle him into bed. Tony doesn’t want to sleep—his heart is raging in his chest, he wants to fight something, hit something, hurt himself. But his limbs are heavy and slow with drink, and when he flails out at Steve, Steve just catches his arm and tucks it back in close to his body.

 

Bucky curls up around Tony, holds him tighter than Tony thought he’d ever be held again. Steve just sits at the end of the bed, watching them. Sorrowful.

 

ººº

 

Tony’s the first one awake, well before sunrise.

 

He slips out from underneath Bucky’s arm and climbs out of bed, careful not to disturb the mattress too much. Steve’s dead asleep in the chair in the corner, arms crossed over his chest, chin dropped against his chest. It’s the same position he sleeps in after a high-stress night of fighting or strategizing, when he can’t quite let his guard down.

 

Tony goes out onto the balcony and settles down to watch the city wake up. It comes alive in increments. First the early-morning shops, the cafés and the bakeries. Then the schoolchildren, hustled by maids and impatient Swiss mothers. Then the businesspeople, stopping off in the cafés and the bakeries for coffee and breakfast, cramming their eco-friendly cars into the narrow _rues_. Every single person in this city lost someone to the snap, he knows.

 

And they’re all still going. Still existing. _The world goes on._

 

Tony thinks, offhand, that it might be nice to open a little coffee shop. Somewhere in Europe. Somewhere no one knows him, knows who he is, what he’s done. Somewhere even a fifty-year-old ex-weapons dealer, ex-superhero can start over fresh.

 

Sitting on that balcony watching the sun rise, Tony realizes that he can do whatever he wants. He might not have Iron Man, or the Avengers, or Stark Industries anymore, but there’s still a whole world out there. Most of it, he hasn’t even seen yet.

 

Maybe last night wasn’t a breakdown. Maybe it was catharsis, a long time coming.

 

Steve’s the next one awake. He staggers out onto the balcony, bleary-eyed, holding two cups of coffee. Hands one to Tony. Tony blows on it and inhales the aromatic steam. Yeah, it would be nice to open a little coffee shop.

 

They sit together quietly for a while, just sipping their coffee, like they always do the morning after a storm. Eventually Steve puts down his paper cup. Turns to look at Tony. Says, strangely enough, “You were always gone in the morning.”

 

Tony frowns. “What?”

 

“The first time we slept together, you were gone before we woke up. And then you treated us like nothing had changed. We figured…I guess we figured it didn’t mean anything to you. Sex, with us. I mean, I can’t speak for Buck, but—that’s what I thought.”

 

It’s jarring to see such a big man cry. It doesn’t seem like Steve has a lot left in him, but a few tears slip over his cheeks before he manages to dash them away with his thumb. He misses one, and it settles into the fringe of his beard, beaded and shining white in the morning light. Tony looks at it like an undiscovered species. Like he doesn’t know what he’s seeing.

 

“What are you trying to say, Steve?” he asks.

 

Steve’s clear, watery eyes look straight to the core of him. “I love you, Tony. I’ve loved you all along, I just never thought you’d feel the same way.”

 

Tony makes a disbelieving noise. “You don’t. You love Bucky.”

 

“I love both of you,” Steve shoots back, almost resentful but too carved-out for there to be any heat in it. “After everything we’ve been through, I’m not about to pick and choose who I love. I love both of you, and I don’t care. I’m not gonna waste time worrying about it.”

 

Tony breathes in sharp. “Steve—“

 

“I love you, Tony. I’m sorry you thought I didn’t.”

 

Tony scrubs a hand over his face. “God, Steve—of course I love you too. Of course I do.”

 

Steve’s face cracks wide open. He reaches for Tony at the same time that Tony moves out of his chair and into Steve’s lap. Steve holds his head as gently as he held his hand that night on the porch and presses short kisses to his mouth, like he’s still trying to tell Tony something, and Tony understands. He understands. _Finally_.

 

Bucky finds them like that a few minutes later, still sunk into each other on the wicker chair. He leans against the door jamb and watches them with a soft, warm smile on his face—the one that Tony thought was tricking him, before. The one that says, _You and me._

 

“I love you idiots,” he says. “Come back to bed.” And that’s that.

 

ººº

 

They end up in the south of France. Tony calls his coffee shop _Maria’s_.

 

It’s country that Bucky and Steve are familiar with, from back in the war. They do a lot of reminiscing, crying and laughing and hugging. Before, Tony would’ve retreated from the face of such closeness, but now they know to grab him before he can, pull him in. They tell him about the Howling Commandos, about their lives before the war, everything.

 

The Avengers, old and new, stop in one by one. Never all together, because they don’t want to draw attention. Every time one of them comes in, Tony gets someone to take a picture of them with him behind the counter. He has an album of them, in the house.

 

Rhodey mails him pictures, too, once he sees Tony’s collection. Snapshots from college, from the early days of Stark Industries, from the compound, the New Avengers smiling in their costumes, Pepper looking like she might smash the camera if Rhodey gets any closer.

 

Peter calls a lot. Tony always takes it, no matter the time of day or night. He took Peter for granted before the snap—took a lot for granted before the snap—but he doesn’t anymore.

 

It’s a few months since the opening of Maria’s that Peter says, “You look happy, Mr. Stark.”

 

That gives Tony pause. He has to think about it. About waking up this morning tangled in Steve, wandering down to the kitchen, kissing Bucky good morning over the coffee machine. About their home, a cute farmhouse with a garden and a yard, a few armaments hidden in the shed out back, just in case. About the dog they’re thinking of adopting. The nightmares he only has a few times a month, now, the roof he hasn’t thought of in a long time.

 

And the future he can actually _see_ , warm and full and neverending.

 

“I am happy,” he tells Peter. “I really am.”

 

It’s a process, because he’s not really sure what to do with happiness, now that he has it. He never expected to get it. It feels like a new mark of the Iron Man suit, awkward and clumsy and not quite flight-worthy. He’s always bumping into things. Bad memories, old habits.

 

But he’ll get it right eventually. He always does.

**Author's Note:**

> cracked my ribcage open for this one, hope yall like it


End file.
